QUIET YEARS OF GROWTH
Outwardly her days were uneventful. She came and went quietly, and
answered her teachers with certainty and precision. She was not
communicative to her companions, and came to know but few of them during
the first term. She watched the trees go sere and bare, and calculated
on the progress of the farmwork. She wondered if the men were in the
corn yet, or whether it were too cold a morning to plow. She studied the
sky to see if there were signs of snow. She could not at once throw off
her daily supervision of the weather and of farmwork.
Her father wrote only at long intervals. His chapped and stiffened hands
managed the pen-stock but painfully. He wrote of the farm affairs, the
yield of corn, the weight of the steers or hogs he had sold, and asked
her how many turkeys he had best keep over.
Carl wrote once or twice and stopped. He was a still more reluctant
correspondent. Carl meant little to her now. The Doctor's dominion was
absolute, and yet there was a subtle change. She no longer blushed in
his presence, and he seemed older and nearer to her, more like an uncle
and adviser. The figure he had been, took its place beside that of
William De Lisle. More substantial, but less sweet and mythical.
Her school life was not her entire intellectual life by any means. She
had the power of absorbing and making use of every sight and sound about
her. She saw a graceful action at table or in the drawing room, and her
mind seized upon it and incorporated it. She did not imitate; she took
something from every one, but from no one too much.
Her eyes lost their round nervous stare, but they searched, searched
constantly, as was natural for a girl of her years and fine animal
nature, but there was brain back of it all. The young men knew nothing
of her searching eyes; indeed, they thought her cold, and a little
contemptuous of them.
Meanwhile their elegance often alienated them from her. There were many
types not far removed from Carl and Henry; farmer's boys with some touch
of refinement and grace, but others had a subtle quality, which told of
homes of refinement and luxury.
Two wonderful things had come to her. One was the knowledge that she was
beautiful, which she came to understand was the burning desire of all
women; and again that she was master of things which had scared her. She
could wear lovely dresses unconsciously, and sit at table with ease, and
walk before her classmates without tremor. She felt power in her heart,
as well as in her fist.
Her winter was a quiet one. She came and went between her classes and
her home at Dr. Thatcher's. She studied in her own room or recited to
the Doctor when he was at leisure. He liked to have the girls come into
his study when he was not too busy, and there he sat figuring on the
probable effect of cocaine or atropine in a certain case, while the
girls read or talked.
Those were wonderful hours to the country girl. She was a long way from
the little cottage on the old coule farm at such times. Dr. Thatcher
felt the same beauty and power in the droop of the head which had
attracted him first in the old school-house, only enriched and in nobler
colorings here.
They went sleighing together, with shouting and laughter, as if the
Doctor were a girl, too. They went skating, and once in awhile to some
entertainment at the church. They were not theatre-going people, and the
lectures and socials of the town and college made up their outings. It
was the Doctor's merry interest in their doings which made young men so
unnecessary to Rose as well as to Josephine.
Then came spring again; the southwest wind awoke, snow began to go, the
grass showed here and there, and Rose's thoughts turned back toward the
coule. There were days when every drop of her blood called out for the
hills and the country roads, the bleat of lambs, the odor of fields, and
the hum of bees, but she kept on at work.
Something elemental stirred in her blood as the leaves came out. The
young men took on added grace and power in her eyes. When they came
before her in their athletic suits, lithe, clean-limbed, joyous, then
her eyes dreamed and her heart beat till the blood choked her breathing.
O, the beautiful sky; O, the shine and shade of leaves! O, the splendor
of young manhood! She fought down the dizziness which came to her. She
smiled mechanically as they stood before her with frank, clean eyes and
laughing lips, and so, slowly, brain reasserted itself over flesh, and
she, too, grew frank and gay.
Then came the vacation. The partings, the bitter pain of leaving the
young people she had learned to love, and, too, came the thought of
home. The dear old coule with its peaks and camel humps, and pappa John!
He was waiting to see her there!
So the pain of leaving her mates was mingled with the joy of
home-coming. She romped on the grass with the young lambs. She followed
Pappa John about as of old, in the fields, while he wondered and
marveled at her. She was so fine and white and lady-like.
She was fain to know all the news of the farm, and the neighborhood. She
felt like kissing all the dear old ladies in the coule. O, the old
friends were the best after all! You could rest on them. They didn't
care how you ate soup. They didn't keep you keyed up to company manners
all the time.
She went back to her old dresses and cotton underwear, and went dirty as
she liked, and got brown and iron-muscled again.
Carl met her on the road one day and bowed and drove on, with hurried
action of the lines. He still bore her rejection of him fresh in mind.
It is everlastingly to his credit, let it be said now, that he never
made use of his youthful intimacy with her. He was a man, with all the
honesty and sincerity and chivalry of a race of gentlemen in his head,
slow-witted as he was.